Starfield Design Director “Can’t Guarantee” a Pacifist Playthrough

Bethesda’s Starfield is confirmed to be a massive experience, with over 1000 planets to explore and survey, more than 20 companions to recruit, star ships to build (and steal), and more. However, there are some things it won’t have, like fishing or planet-side mounts and vehicles. Unfortunately, a 100 percent pacifist playthrough isn’t quite possible.

In a recent Discord Q&A (transcription via Reddit), designer Emil Pagliarulo and design director Will Shen were asked about playing through the entire game without killing anyone or anything. Shen couldn’t “guarantee every mission can be completed in pacifist mode, but we do have a couple of systems that will help. One system is our Speech Challenge game, where you can persuade someone to do something like not fight you.

“The Speech Challenge game is added in specific scripted moments, and we try to add one into most quests where important characters confront you.” Pagliarulo said, “We talked about this very early on during pre-production, whether or not we would fully support a ‘non-lethal’ playthrough. We realized that, for various reasons, that wasn’t totally feasible.”

However, there are still some “good” options for non-lethal players, from dialogue to non-lethal weapons. “Those can be used in certain situations, honestly a lot of situations, though I couldn’t comfortably say you can complete the entire game without any killing whatsoever. The Settled Systems is mostly civilized, but it can be dangerous if you’re going off the beaten path. And you’re absolutely going off the beaten path!”

Given the overall scale, designing Starfield so players could get by without killing would prove difficult. Nevertheless, with how creative fans can be, not to mention whatever modders cook up, it should be interesting to see a pacifist playthrough is eventually possible in some form.

Starfield launches on September 6th for Xbox Series X/S and PC. Preloads begin August 17th for Xbox Series X/S and PC via the Windows Store, while Steam users can start on August 30th.